Good point.

Posted by: @the_wild_queen

I mean, one of Edmund's titles was Duke of Lantern Waste. You would think at least he would remember it.

I'd forgotten that detail — is it in Prince Caspian, or The Horse and His Boy? (I don't have time to go leafing through all the books just now!) But that just underscores my conviction that Lewis himself forgot exactly what he'd written in the ending of LWW by the time he wrote the later books. That's the only explanation for this and most of the other inconsistencies between the Chronicles — Lewis's concept of Narnia (and the surrounding lands) kept on expanding as he wrote more books, and it seems he never checked back to make sure new details in the later books were consistent with what he wrote in the earlier ones (particularly the first one).

Posted by: @courtenay

Posted by: @col-klink

I was under the impression that there weren't, since the Pevensies had no idea what a lamppost was at the end of LWW. But of course, everyone in this thread is saying that part was a continuity goof, so maybe I should ignore it.

The continuity goof isn't the Pevensies having no idea what the lamppost is at the end of LWW — it's Lucy near the end of HHB (written a few years later) retelling how she and her siblings first came into Narnia, a tale that we're assured she's told many times before. That scene is set, chronologically, only a year before the Pevensies return to their own world, and yet it's totally inconsistent with them (in LWW) having almost no memory of the lamppost and nothing but the vaguest idea that "strange adventures or else some great change of our fortunes" lie beyond it!!  

I personally think that the situation in LWW is the one that has to stand, if Netflix is going to be faithful to the original stories but not have inconsistencies. [...] Whereas the snippet from Lucy in HHB can easily be left out of an adaptation, because it doesn't make any difference at all to the plot of that story.

I think the continuity goof isn't even Lucy remembering her past near the end of HHB, it is that concept of there being only about a year between HHB and the White Stag (on the last page of LWW).

The books don't say so. The only source we've got for the chronology that makes this claim, is the Time-line which Walter Hooper found and published after Lewis' death. Perhaps when Lewis wrote that time-line - after he'd finished all the books - he had forgotten that he had written the last page of LWW as if a lot more than 15 years had passed. Although the description of Tumnus' age is vague, I find it more consistent with a greater timespan, rather than just 15 years.

"one year it fell out that Tumnus (who was a middle-aged Faun by now and beginning to be stout) came down river and brought them news"

Add twenty years or so after HHB, before the White Stag - that would allow for a lot more of what we see on the last page of LWW.

In the spirit of fun, I offer this tongue-in-cheek explanation:  in the Bible, Genesis 14:14, we read that,

And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive (that being his nephew Lot), he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan”

Now of course Dan is a city not heard of in the time of Genesis.  It was founded centuries later by the Tribe of Dan in the time of Joshua.  It is clear that a later interpreter inserted the name “Dan” to make the meaning clear. This redaction does not by one iota compromise my belief in the Holy Scriptures. 

Well, it looks as though a similar situation has been found in the Chronicles of Narnia!  The “Lantern Waste Problem” can be laid at the feet of a well-meaning editor! It wasn’t Lewis!  It was that dratted Hooper, or Gresham, or Harper-Collins!!

Posted by: @varna

 

The books don't say so. The only source we've got for the chronology that makes this claim, is the Time-line which Walter Hooper found and published after Lewis' death. Perhaps when Lewis wrote that time-line - after he'd finished all the books - he had forgotten that he had written the last page of LWW as if a lot more than 15 years had passed. Although the description of Tumnus' age is vague, I find it more consistent with a greater timespan, rather than just 15 years.

"one year it fell out that Tumnus (who was a middle-aged Faun by now and beginning to be stout) came down river and brought them news"

Add twenty years or so after HHB, before the White Stag - that would allow for a lot more of what we see on the last page of LWW.

If there was about 15 years between LWW and HHB, just before LWW final chapter, and Tumnus was a youngish faun in his 30s at the start of LWW, then being middle aged in his later 40s seems realistic. After all, the Professor was supposedly a very old man, but on the time line we see him as being in his early 50s.

I am sure the lampost was lit all the time and left that way to indicate to Jadis she was approaching the Guardian Tree and to go no further. After she conquered Narnia, its purpose was forgotten, thus "The Lantern Waste."